Petitioning the government by screaming

The First Amendment protects "the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances." This right has been broadly interpreted to allow almost any sort of assembly and petition, from million-man marches, to flag-burning protests, to neo-Nazi parades passing through neighborhoods populated by Holocaust survivors.

The Trump era and the "Resistance" movement have refocused attention on the right to protest. Democratic leaders have not questioned the aggressive protests and shouting-down of speakers, but the mid-term elections indicate that many moderate voters find the behavior at some protests rude, uncivil and crude. During the committee hearings on Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court, Americans saw opponents of Kavanaugh's appointment shouting down the senators conducting the hearings with coordinated screams of "Shame On You!" "Shame On You!"

As a career newspaper editor, I am accustomed to defending the right of free speech (and press), but I have difficulty classifying shouted insults as speech worthy of constitutional protection. Is it really "petitioning the government" when you verbally attack public officials and call them names?

What's worse, insofar as the protesters are concerned, they are failing to sway the public officials they are "petitioning" and the voters who tend to be turned off by the shouting down of elected officials, regardless of the issue involved. President Trump and other Republican officials used uncivilized, disrespectful behavior of the screaming protesters to ignite the passions of GOP voters.

Democratic leaders would be wise to disavow the aggressive shouting-down tactics and the tendency to portray every judicial or executive appointment as an Armageddon. Those tactics (which are also used by Republican leaders) are not succeeding. Voters are not so foolish as to believe the hyperbolic claims against individual nominees or specific bills. Has Neil Gorsuch been that bad for Democrats? Would Merrick Garland been so disastrous for Republicans?

Americans are sharply divided on many issues, but the behavior of advocates on both sides is doing nothing to bridge the divide and resolving the issue through  mutual agreement and compromise.